A PR event, part of a Europe-travelling roadshow designed to get potential customers, dealers, and other interested parties into what Renault electric vehicles will be rolling out in Ireland from late November and through next year.
Renault Ireland's Eric Basset (pictured above right with ESB eCars' Paul Mulvanney) offered once again the local Irish angle to the EV programme which—though each side tries to maintain its separate identities—the company's global partner Nissan has also given. As has the ESB eCars division, backing up everybody who wants to bring an EV to Ireland because it needs the numbers to justify the big investment the electricity company is putting into the charging infrastructure.
In the Irish context, this is a long term project with the main driver being the effort put into the programme by the ESB through its eCars programme. Car sales numbers won't do it quickly unless there's one heck of an oil emergency all of a sudden. Barring that, by 2020 it is the Government's objective that 10 percent of the cars on our roads will be electric.
If we assume that this will be achieved—and trying to forecast anything eight years ahead is an exercise fraught with ifs and buts—that might be a total EV car park of 230,000. Eric Basset suggests his company might have a 10 percent share of this. We won't be able to pin that on him, as non-native MDs of Irish subsidiaries of global carmakers tend to be rotated out after a relatively few years. But given the lead which both his company and partner Nissan have taken in the EV game, Renault is likely enough to have a substantial share as time goes on.
The big difficulty is not really the much-touted 'range anxiety', because that will sort itself out quickly enough. Early adopters will show that they can manage comfortably within the existing range, and battery technology is accelerating at a rate which will bring it past the psychological 200kms point fairly soon. No, the big 'switch-off' is price. At about a third more than an equivalent in any of the standard segments, even if there wasn't a recession, it takes a full wallet and a brave soul to invest in something different.
Renault's solution to this is to sell the car and lease the battery. So a Fluence ZE will sell for around €17,000 when it gets here next March, and the battery will run at €72 a month plus VAT. Spreading the pain somewhat, and providing the leasing facilities through a new Renault Finance facility to be launched here. When they first announced that late last year, I did the sums and found that the result didn't stack up particularly well against an equivalent diesel car. In fact, it is likely to cost you more if you exceed 15,000kms a year.
But we'll park that one for the time being. It's my own view, and I'll wait until I get some kind of further explanation from Renault.
The hard part is also mentioned in that other article of mine. If somebody wants to try an electric car, and after three or four years doesn't want to be part of the great adventure any more? Are they going to be able to trade the EV back in for a diesel or petrol car of their brand of choice?
If I was a local Ford dealer, I wouldn't be offering much of a trade in on a Renault Fluence ZE against a new Focus TDCI. Especially when the car doesn't even come with ownership of the battery, the only thing that makes it go. Actually, if I was that Ford dealer, or any other brand dealer, I'd not be interested in taking in that Fluence ZE at all. Of course, the hapless owner would probably be able to get a deal on a petrol or diesel Renault. But when you have only one choice, is that going to be a good deal?
Nissan and its Leaf isn't quite in the same boat, as the car is being sold with battery ownership. Same too with Mitusbishi's i-MiEV and its partner versions from Citroen and Peugeot. And I suspect with Ford and BMW, who are well on the way to bringing mainstream EVs to market. The main issue here is still the hefty extra purchase cost.
Let me move to the energy source itself. Electricity, and how it will be available and sold.
The ESB is providing the first 2,000 EV buyers with free home charging units as their part of a package of incentives. After that it will cost around €1,000 per unit to each electric car buyer. Right, they technically can replenish the battery from an ordinary socket, but it will take longer to do. In fairness, eCars expects that the cost could drop to around €400 once there are serious numbers of installations involved.
Then, for charging from public units, which do the job much faster, it is likely there will be a premium cost. The charging will be managed by the use of pre-paid smart cards, which will have the ability to extract varying amounts for a given charge. If used in a private commercial establishment, such as a filling station or a hotel car park, this premium could be determined by the owner of the facility. But eCars have told me that any such charges will be held at a level 'to make them competitive' against traditionally powered cars. But the comment made that this 'won't exceed 40 percent' more than standard costs suggests that the present electricity price of whatever is normal home costs won't last too long.
Besides, as soon as any kind of critical mass of EV ownership happens, the State is going to want its cut, to make up for loss of excise duties on traditional fuels. It can most easily manage that from public recharge pricing.
But that's a future shock, so to speak. The bottom line is that the car companies and the infrastructure suppliers are at present putting a lot of money on the line that the future of personal transport is electric.
There's a precedent which should encourage them. At least from British and Continental European experience. The railways made the shift from fossil fuels, in a programme which began decades ago. And it has worked.
In our island of relatively small distances, electric cars should work too. Provided enough buyers are brave enough to get involved.
Whether enough will is—and will be for some time—a much-pondered question.
